The origins of this word are obscure. It may be linked to the Spanish trinca, which means 'a rope used on a ship to secure or lash down goods on board.' This word also exists in Italian, Galician, Portuguese, and Catalan as trinca, which means 'nautical rope.' The contiguous minims of the written forms are sometimes indistinguishable, making the readings of these occurrences uncertain (see London English p.193). The oldest attestations are from a legal Anglo-Norman context, and it is not clear if the substantive is a borrowing from Middle English or if it is Anglo-Norman in origin.